10. PRSR 07 14 2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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COHIMONWFAL Oaks FOIkS Minneapolu' ruburbaniter nand up for a little stand of hardy hardwoods. WHAT WOI7LD YOU DO to save an acre of creel? Would you spend an evening testifying az a public hear- , ing, oe perhaps an akemoon solicit- ' ing donations door-ro-door? Would you spend actual money-say, $20? $100? How about $185,000? And how about guaranteeing chat amount , with your home? That's exactly what a small group of neighbors did in Hopkins, Minnesota. Down a narrow street seemingly for- R~~'RAP rhetoric or chaining themselves co the trees, however, a group of neighborhood residents of- fered anunusual alternative: Buy the land from the develop- erand give it to the city for a park. They offered their homes as collateral. "Our initial recommen- dation was `Don't do this,"' recalls Steve Mielke, city man- ager of Hopkins. It seemed a frightening price to pay for a mere sliver of land. Unde- terred, the Oala Folks, as the group came to De called, nego- tiated an arrangement in which the city would buy the acre and the group would re- pay is over a dozen years. Aker the developer's reduction of the selling price ro $185,000, some initial imbursemencs, and the ciry's forgiveness of the loan's interest, the yearly pay- ments came co about $11,000. Four brave families co-signed the loan, and each of the fami- gotten by city maintenance I crews is a wooded neighborhood of about 20 split-levels and ranch- ers, and right next ro that neighbor- hood is a well-loved (and expensive) little tray of trees. The Minnehaha Creek neighborhood ~`f , ~ is an isolated enclave surrounded by Min- ' ^eapolis sprawl apartments, highways, fast food, a regional mall, and more high- ways. An acre here, an acre there, the woods ~ and wetlands have disappeared over the i ~ `~~ years. By the early 1990s, the only remaining buffers from encroaching development were a marshy wetland co the east and a narrow strip of gnarled oaks co the west. So when a developer pro- posedputting up townhouses on that last wooded acre, a line was drawn in the soil. Rather than descending on city hall with lofty lies has donated more than $20,000 through the years. The Oaks Folks started up a web sire (wtrnuoaktfolkr.org) and a newsletter to get the word out and ask for dona- tions, and they collected alu- minum cans to offset printing costs. The stakes were high. Had the Oaks Folks failed to make a payment, the city could have assessed their prop- erties for the balance, poten- tially forcing foreclosure. "II seemed like a lazge amount of money for volunteers ro raise," Mielke says. But they did it. This September, the final few hundred dollars will be paid to the city, and the acre of corks will become a Hopkins city park free and clear. "In the long run, we were wrong;' Mielke chuckles, and he seems glad to be wrong. $185,000 raised over 12 yeazs by a handful of empcy- nesters to save an acre of trees: Now that's park dedication. -ADA~r REGN ARVIDSON. ASLA 1~4ru~sC~ 7~LENfr~GTL~C.E Y~~- t.tuE ~~T 'Lt~' E 0